What are the technologies:

Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

Quick link to...
GIS Data Formats
Projections & Datum
Scale in GIS
Accuracy vs. Precision
Geospatial Resources for Agricultural

GIS is the entry, editing, storage, query, retrieval, transformation, analysis, display (soft copy) and printing (hard copy) of geospatial data. Basically, it's the use and manipulation of geospatial data, which is data that has a spatial component.

The key point behind GIS is that all data is georeferenced, which means that it is located by means of geographical coordinates with respect to some reference system. (This is how a GIS differs from most computer-aided drafting or graphics program.)

GIS allows for the integration of geospatial data from many sources (e.g., your GPS unit, downloaded data from online, and scanned maps), many scales (e.g., from your small study site, to the entire State and on up to the entire globe), and many formats (e.g., points, lines, polygons, imagery, 2D data, 3D data, temporal data, and databases and spreadsheets).

GIS is powerful... and useful: The spatial aspects of an social or natural system… (e.g. location, amount, distance, adjacency, isolation, fragmentation, pattern of things) impact the function of the system, whether that system be a forest or another ecosystem, or an urban area or other region. GIS and other geospatial technologies can help us understand the underlying spatial relationships in our systems so that we may manage & plan for ecosystem changes.

More information: